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STATE OF THE ART; Classic Beauty, Cubed

COME away with me to my desert island, sort of a cross between ''Survivor'' and ''Fantasy Island.'' The fantasy comes into play in that the island would already have a Power Macintosh G4 Cube computer with a 15-inch flat-panel Studio Display, a set of Harman Kardon SoundSticks speakers and a fast Internet connection. Add to that just one luxury item, ''Survivor'' style, and that would be a copy of Culture 4.0, an endlessly fascinating CD-ROM from Cultural Resources.

Culture 4.0 (www.culturalresources .com) is an ambitious Western civilization study guide for the Internet age, for adults as well as for students. It works with Windows computers as well as with Macs.

Although I have become quite intimate with both types of machines over time, I think I'm going to vote Windows off my island. I suppose some things would move me to choose Windows -- if, say, the alternative was eating rats. Both are acquired tastes. But the new Macintosh G4 Cube computer, like the Parthenon in Athens, is a thing of classic beauty.

The Parthenon, as I was reminded by browsing through the Culture 4.0 software, is a superb architectural example of the golden rectangle, one that has the most aesthetically pleasing ratio of length to width -- the mama bear of rectangles, according to one of the many clever academics, historians and critics whose views are included in Culture 4.0. A golden rectangle can be divided into a square and a smaller rectangle that has the same proportions as the original rectangle, and the smaller rectangle can itself be subdivided into a square and still smaller rectangle with those proportions, and so on.

The Cube is a Power Macintosh G4 computer shrunk to an 8-inch silver square. The computer is suspended at the top of a crystal clear, rectangular case that takes up less than a square foot of desk space. It is an impressive technical achievement, and one that should please anyone who lives in a small apartment or works at a small desk. Because it has no internal fan, the Cube computer is silent, which is another bonus.

There is a price to pay for such beauty. The basic Cube, with a 450-megahertz G4 microprocessor, costs $1,799, which is more than one would pay for a comparable Macintosh in the larger, tower configuration. It also lacks expansion slots, other than one for an Apple Airport wireless network card.

Apple says the 450-MHz G4 chip delivers better performance than a Pentium III chip operating at twice the processor speed. Its marketing pitch for the Cube boasts, ''Honey, we shrunk the supercomputer.'' Intel and Advanced Micro Devices counter that Apple must have been out in the sun too long.

But the Apple G4 chip can indeed hold its own with any Windows-based machine, even those with Pentium III chips, which now reach 1,000 megahertz or more. Megahertz is just one measure of a chip's performance, and it can be misleading, like trying to compare a Ferrari engine running at 4,000 revolutions per minute with a Honda engine at the same r.p.m. In this case, the G4 chip is the Ferarri.

The Cube comes with 64 megabytes of system memory, a 20-gigabyte hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive that loads from the top the way a toaster does, a better-than-average graphics card, an Ethernet port, FireWire and U.S.B. ports, and a 56K modem. A pair of baseball-size Harman Kardon digital speakers, also in clear plastic, sound as good as they look.

The Cube also comes with a greatly improved Apple Pro keyboard and an elliptical Apple Pro optical mouse, replacing the hated hockey-puck mechanical mouse and skeletal keyboard that Apple has been using since the introduction of the iMac.

The old round mouse was a case study in the hazards of putting form over function. The new optical mouse blends form and function much more harmoniously, and it is more accurate and more reliable than the mechanical mouse it replaces.

Owners of older Macintoshes will be able to buy the new U.S.B.-based Apple Pro keyboard and mouse from the Apple Store later this year for $60 each, but they will also have to upgrade to Version 9.0.4 of the OS.

On my fantasy island there is also a pirate's chest of gold, which would allow me to spend $2,299 for a souped-up Cube with a 500-megahertz G4 chip, 128 megabytes of RAM and a 30-gigabyte hard disk. The memory can be expanded to 256 megabytes for an extra $300, and the hard disk to 40 gigabytes for $100.

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The perfect complement for the Cube is Apple's elegant new 15-inch flat-panel Studio Display L.C.D. ($999), which matches the silver and crystal scheme and takes up a fraction of the desk space of a conventional monitor. (It is a Mini-Me version of Apple's magnificent but magnificently priced 22-inch Cinema Display, which at $3,999 goes beyond the resources of even a pirate chest.) The Cube works with any V.G.A. monitor, but the 15-inch Studio Display L.C.D. (liquid crystal display) takes less desk space than a comparable 17-inch tube display.

In part because it uses a truly digital interface, the Studio Display L.C.D. delivers a brighter and sharper image than any other flat-panel monitor I've seen. And the Studio Display L.C.D. plugs directly into the Cube without the need for a separate power cord, enhancing the monitor's already unmatched desk appeal.

To complete the package, consider adding the beautiful Harman Kardon SoundSticks speaker package ($299), available only through Apple's online store (www.apple.com). The three-piece system consists of a beach-ball subwoofer and a pair of nine-inch desk speakers, all in clear plastic. Although the subwoofer is intended to be placed under the user's desk, it is a shame to hide its mesmerizing violet light. On the other hand, the subwoofer may remind some people of the severed head of Robby the Robot.

The SoundSticks system delivers brilliant sound, especially when the user is watching DVD movies on the Studio Display.

Together, the Cube, the Studio Display L.C.D. and the SoundSticks speakers create a stunning array of desk sculpture. It is a shame, then, that one has to junk it up with an ugly printer. There are no printers available in the crystal and silver color scheme, although the gray-and-black Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 970 comes closest. Apple has not indicated whether it will license its silver color scheme to peripherals makers, but I hope it does.

All these thoughts about beauty and art surfaced as I was using the Cube to browse Culture 4.0, which is subtitled The Contextual Guide and Internet Index to Western Civilization, Covering Various and Sundry Things Every High School Student Should Learn and Every College Student and Graduate Should Know.

Culture 4.0 ($69, plus $5 shipping) draws heavily from the lectures of Dr. Walter W. Reinhold, a professor of music history and humanities who has twice been voted teacher of the year at New York University. Classroom teachers or self-teachers may want to order the 195-page printed workbook ($29, plus $5 shipping).

The first Culture version appeared a decade ago in Apple's Hypercard format, which could be described as a prototype of the World Wide Web, only with training wheels. Culture 4.0 has now been rewritten in Web format so it requires the use of a browser.

Compared with fancier educational programs created by big software companies with multimillion-dollar production budgets, Culture 4.0's presentation is a bit threadbare, and it can be occasionally difficult to navigate. But the program is rich in ideas and content, which is where it really counts.

The disk itself comes with more than 10,000 profiles of famous people, more than 1,700 pictures and illustrations, and more than 200 short, entertaining essays on political, literary, musical, artistic, philosophical and theological history, all woven together to put people, events and ideas into context. The program's scope is virtually unlimited because it has more than 25,000 links to related sources of information on the Web. And most of those links have links, creating an outward spiral of information as elegant as the Nautilus shell.

''Personalities, events, works of art and styles all play on and off each other,'' Professor Reinhold notes in an introduction to the program. Culture 4.0 builds order out of what might otherwise seem to be the chaos of historical events and ideas, and that, after all, is what civilization is all about.

Above all, Culture 4.0 reminds us that in our haste to make computer literacy a goal of our schools, we must not forget cultural literacy. And that is a beautiful thing.